Stephan,
Good idea to talk to LELL tower and get a feel for how things would work there.
Although I have never departed for an IFR flight from Sabadell, I do that often from LESB, and that is a somewhat similar situation, for instance because it is also next to a major airport, so maybe the following observations help:
LESB is in G and any IFR flight plan needs to be Z. Depending on where you go, your IFR clearance pick-up point is clearly off your route. In such a case, and if VMC, I don’t fly to that point, but head in my desired direction, and consciously wait to get in touch with an approach controller. When I finally do, I am so far along my desired route that he would not any longer direct me to that point 
Depending on traffic and the weather situation he would then instruct me to remain VFR and climb to a certain altitude and to a certain waypoint.
Then sometime later the controller clears you to a FL into CAS. Usually, the controller is not explicit about at which point in time your actually transition to IFR.. So do not expect something like ‘IFR started at 12:03’ or the like. If you are uncomfortable with that, just ask. But be sure to use standard phraseology, because an issue with Spanish controllers is that their english is rather weak. If things things get a bit out of the ordinary that weakness becomes apparent. So don’t use words like ‘pick-up IFR’, but say ‘change to IFR’ and speak slowly and clearly 
Now, if the weather is marginal (not all that often in Spain) you may not have the luxury of heading out VFR for long. In that case I still do the above but talk to the controller sooner and say ‘unable to maintain visual conditions, request immediate change to IFR’ and that gets his attention with a positive result.
So, in the case of LELL, unless the people there insist on a certain procedure, what you may want to do is to head north VFR and start talking to the controller not before say 5-10 miles from the field. Stay clear of the approach paths into Barcelona (LEBL) and Girona (LEGE) in order not to scare the controller.. In any event, he may want to keep you relatively low at first while you are in the general area of these approach paths.
Sabadell won’t let you depart unless certain (rather good) VFR conditions exist, even if you have a Z plan. At least that is how it was a few years ago. eddh.de has a few reports on that. So yes, it would be a good idea and habe a chat with the tower crew in order to exactly understand their constraints.
feel that the major problem with national differences from ICAO regulations is that pilots from each state tend to believe that their national regulations apply universally!
Well said, Airborne!
PPL training is 100% nationally focussed and doesn’t prepare pilots well for international flying. The have to learn it (sometimes the hard way) after getting their licenses.
I don’t expect PPL flying schools and their instructors to teach each and every national particularity. It would blow the minds of the already overloaded students.
What I would expexct from instructors though is that when they make some statement about a certain (national) regulation, they would at least add a remark each time “but just don’t expect this to be the same in other countries”.
This doesn’t happen much, mostly because many instructors (for lack if international GA experience) don’t even know themselves that there are these differences…
I once had an argument with a US CFI over the meaning of “K”. He insisted that “K” means airport, I tried to tell him that it means “USA”. And of course aircraft have “N-numbers” not “tail numbers” or “registrations”.
The bigger the country, the less relevant the rest of the world becomes… Germans think that US actors have weird voices and bad sound quality in the English version of the movie because they are used to the German dubbed voices and the studio sound quality where the dubbing is performed…
boscomantico wrote:
This doesn’t happen much, mostly because many instructors (for lack if international GA experience) don’t even know themselves that there are these differences…
Yes perfekt point! 5.000h flight time in traffik pattern and 50NM around!
achimha wrote:
The IFR ban in G in Germany is IMO not enforceable. The only thing we got is a statement from DFS that it is not permitted for safety reasons but as I’m allowed to do it by law (SERA) and I do not need ATC clearance for it (i.e. DFS), I am free to do it. Not a lot of airspace G in Germany though.
Didn’t Germany circumvent this rule in SERA by using the possibility (also in SERA) of imposing higher IFR minimum altitudes so that IFR in class G would be below the minimum altitude? I distinctly recall that someone said so on this forum.
Just one question regarding IFR flying in G: How do you maintain separation if in IMC?
Emir wrote:
Just one question regarding IFR flying in G: How do you maintain separation if in IMC?
You rely on your God of choice… Big Sky theory, there is nothing more incompatible with a German (administration) mindset than that.
What is the recommended procedure if I don’t believe in god(s)?
Believe in statistics!
